Financial Times on Kazakhstan

If you want to know anything about the political economy of CIS countries, there is no better place to turn than the Financial Times. Always erudite, FT’s special reports provide a broad evaluation of the region’s economy, politics, culture, and society often without the usual ideological claptrap about the incompatibility between capitalism and authoritarianism. Take […]

CIS Most Dangerous for Journalists (If you leave out war zones)

Reports about how the CIS is dangerous for journalists are so common that their worthy efforts are starting to sound like a bad pop song. Freedom House is the newest NGO/think tank to give its evaluation of media freedom. To no one’s surprise its report, Muzzling the Media: The Return of Censorship in the CIS, […]

Stiff Measures

I found this delightful picture at Krill Pankratov’s NezNotes, who found it via Mad Max’s Journal. For non-Russian speakers, the sign reads: “Dear owners of local gardens: Those who throw trash will be fucked in the ass. The Brigade of Forest Homosexuals.” Tags: Nonsense|Russia|environmentalism